Durango is amid yet another unseasonably warm winter.
While a vocal minority of winter-haters may relish the same clear skies and moderate temperatures that are plunging local skiers into despair, the parched landscape poses grave problems for local ranchers.
Doug Ramsey, who has run a farm with his wife, Pam, near the Old Fort Lewis College campus for nearly four decades, said the lack of moisture is leaving him at a serious financial disadvantage.
Usually, he rears a small flock of lambs until April, when he sells them to private individuals after his wife shears them, using the wool to weave.
But this year, the warm winter has left his pastures arid, and the few patches of green grass are apt to become straw-like without rain or snow, he said.
That means his lambs will reach little more than half their full weight by April, forcing an early, money-losing sale.
Ramsey also sells hay, but fears the warm winter could desiccate his crop. He could lose as much as $8 per bale.
Ramsey, a former U.S. Department of Agriculture scientist who studied soil, said the trend of warmer winters in Southwest Colorado fits into the broader pattern of global warming.
He said during the 1980s, winters in La Plata County were never this warm and dry.
“This year, there’s been no precipitation. We haven’t seen any moisture other than a couple of traces back in December,” he said.
“We used to see snow on the ground from Thanksgiving till March, at least a foot, and as much as four feet. Winter used to be white in Durango,” he said.
Travis Booth, forecaster with the National Weather Service in Grand Junction, said the Durango-La Plata County Airport has received one-quarter of an inch of moisture since Dec. 1, a mere fraction of the normal 2.19 inches, an average based on winter snowfall between 1981 and 2010.
He said a storm was headed toward Durango and predicted to descend today, but the San Juan Mountains would see the bulk of the moisture.
Booth said the U.S. Drought Monitor, which collaborates with the National Weather Service, is classifying Southwest Colorado as “unusually dry,” but had not yet extended it full-on “drought” status.
Even if a storm brings substantial snow and rain, Ramsey fears his farm won’t entirely recover from this year’s warm, dry winter.
While the weather bodes poorly for ranchers, wildlife are likely to fare better, said Joe Lewandowski with Colorado Parks and Wildlife.
“Overall, wildlife are very well-adapted to big fluctuations in weather,” Lewandowski said.
He said that the daily temperature indexes that humans tend to dwell on are less useful when gauging animals’ experience, as wildlife tend to hunt at night.
“Mountain lions are still experiencing below-zero temperatures,” he said.
He said if anything, the warm temperatures threaten wildlife because they embolden locals to hike in wildlife closures that have been cordoned off by the U.S. Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management.
“In some areas around Animas City Mountain and the hospital, we know that with the warm weather, people have been violating the closures,” he said.
While hikers may take a cavalier attitude toward the sight of a bolting deer, he said, the deer gathered in the closures “aren’t your town deer.”
“These are deer that have migrated from the high country,” he said. “And any kind of human disturbance is going to cause these animals to expend energy in flight of humans.”
“There are plenty of places to hike,” he said.
cmcallister@durangoherald.com
Closed trails
Trails closed to the public around Durango are Bureau of Land Management areas at Animas City Mountain, Twin Buttes and Grand View Ridge. Twin Buttes belongs to the city of Durango and Perins Peak and Bodo state wildlife areas are Colorado Parks and Wildlife refuges, but the same restrictions apply.
Trespassing will result in a $275 citation, the BLM said Wednesday.
The areas, closed in early December, will reopen no later than April 15.
